The Designful Company: How to build a culture of nonstop innovation (Voices That Matter) | 
 enlarge | Author: Marty Neumeier
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 7384
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0321580060
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9780321580061
ASIN: 0321580060
Publication Date: December 26, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
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Product Description
“The complex business problems we face today can’t be solved with the same thinking that created them,” says author Marty Neumeier in this entertaining and original read. Instead, he says, we need to start from a place outside traditional business thinking. In an era of fast-moving markets and leap-frogging innovations, we can no longer “decide” the way forward. Today we have to “design” the way forward?or risk ending up in the fossil layers of business history.
This is the third in the author’s bestselling series of “whiteboard overviews.” In his first, THE BRAND GAP, he addressed the gulf between business strategy and customer experience. In his second, ZAG, he explored the number-one strategy of high-performance brands. In the third, THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY, he shows how design thinking can build a culture of nonstop innovation. “If you wanna innovate,” he says, “you gotta design.”
Excerpts from The Designful Company
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Neumeier's most valuable book so far January 8, 2009
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Those of us who have read Marty Neumeier's The Brand Gap (2003) and/or Zag (2006) realize that he has a tough act to follow: himself. In these previously published "whiteboard overview" books, he shared his thoughts about the gap "between logic and magic," and then zoomed in to help readers "build a sustainable competitive advantage." He explained how and why, when focus is paired with differentiation, supported by a trend, and surrounded by compelling communications, "you have the basic ingredients of a zag"--in other words, a point of radical differentiation. In his most recent book, Neumeier briefly reviews these and other key ideas before shifting his attention to the challenge of organizing a company for agility by developing a "designful mind": that is, a perspective that enables decision-makers to invent the widest range of solutions for the "wicked problems" now facing their company, their industry, and their world.
Neumeier is president of Neutron, a San Francisco-based firm, that designs and facilitates culture-change programs that spur innovation. In co-sponsorship with Stanford University, his firm conducted a survey to identify "wicked problems"--problems so persistent, pervasive, or slippery that they seem insoluble. Ten are listed on Page 2 and range from "balancing long-term goals with short-term demands" to "aligning strategy with customer experience." In this book, Neumeier explains how to establish and then sustain a culture of nonstop innovation, one that is guided and informed by a discipline of design so that it generates nonstop solutions to whatever wicked problems it may encounter. (Note: The solution process must be nonstop in response to constant changes of the nature and/or extent of each problem to be solved.)
According to Neumeier, a designful company inserts "making" between "knowing" and "doing". Its designers don't actually solve problems. They "work through" them. They use non-logical processes that are difficult to express in words but easier to express in action. They use models, mockups, sketches, and stories as their vocabulary. They operate in the space between "knowing" and "doing," prototyping new solutions that arise from their four strengths of empathy [i.e. understanding the motivations of stakeholders to forge stronger bonds], intuition [a shortcut to understanding situations], imagination [new ideas are generated by divergent thinking, not convergent thinking], and idealism [an obsession with getting it right, obtaining what is missing, making whatever changes may be necessary, etc.]. One of Neumeier's most important points is that any organization (regardless of its size or nature) needs designers at all levels and in all areas of its operations. "To build an innovative culture, a company must keep itself in a perpetual state of reinvention. Radical ideas must be the norm, not the exception...Companies don't fail because they choose the wrong course--they fail because they can't imagine a better one."
As is also true of two predecessors, The Brand Gap and Zag, The Designful Company is a "whiteboard overview" rather than a traditional book in terms of both its design and content. Although Neumeier's unorthodox approach will no doubt irritate some people, I think his approach is both appropriate and effective. To those who are thinking about purchasing this book, I presume to offer several suggestions. Keep in mind that the presentation of Neumeier's counterintuitive ideas requires the format and illustrations selected. He offers a briefing on options to consider when designing and then building a culture of nonstop innovation. It remains for readers to work their way through the material in whatever order works best for them. Read all of the customer reviews of it that Amazon features. (FYI, I never read other reviews until after I have submitted my own.) This is not a book for everyone, nor does Neumeier make any such claim.
If you read the book and then decide to act upon several of his suggestions, be prepared to encounter what James O'Toole has aptly characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Radical ideas and their advocates are perceived to be--and they are--serious threats to those who defend the status quo. Neumeier has much of value to say about the power of effective storytelling when attempting to engage others in change initiatives. He correctly observes that stories aligned with key messages should be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional. (Please see Pages 88-95.) I also highly recommend books on business narratives written by Stephen Denning (The Leader's Guide to Storytelling), Doug Lipman (Improving Your Storytelling), and Annette Simmons (The Story Factor).
As these brief remarks indicate, I think this is Marty Neumeier's most important--indeed his most valuable--book thus far because he addresses issues that are relevant to an organization's entire culture whereas, previously, he focused on a specific organizational imperative such as bridging the distance between business strategy and customer experience with five interconnected disciplines or using the first and most strategic of those disciplines to achieve radical differentiation.
 Good book to read on airplane January 6, 2009
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Let me start off by giving my background, so that it gives a perspective.
I am a senior software engineer, mostly doing architect work around these
days.
The book is short, as the author wanted to make it readable on an
airplane trip. Now, let me say that this has worked both for and
against in my opinion. The book is full of glorious tidbits which
could take up an entire semester of design course in MBA or industrial
engineering. But to condense it in one small book, means that the
reader has to be attentive and excercise his mind to understand the
points made by the author. Also I felt that the points were not
really new, but heard before, and there were just too many in the
book. Instead of harping on one common theme of making a designful
company, the reader gets boggled with various ideas thrown at him.
The tone of the book is not academic, like a professor, but like a
consultant who would want to advise you on how to turn around the
design culture of your company and charge a million for that. It
almost feels like a presentation, a huge one at that, given by
a top notch consultants to interested CEOs, COOs etc.
There is a short text summary of the entire book at the end for those
who can't read the entire book. There is a list of top ten "wicked" problems
at the end and suggestions on how to solve them.
Some readers have complained about the font and the binding of the book.
But I would like to point out that most of these were given
advanced reader copies for review, and it is expected that the books
are not in the final production stage. I really dont think the final
production of the book to suffer from quality issue.
Not a bad book for company execs to pass around to their employees
to try ignite a designful culture. And yes, the author's purpose is
served, good book to read on airplane. Some food for thought.
A thought provoking book on innovate or perish January 6, 2009
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was recently reading an article on Forbes maganize which talked about 'who would have thought that we would need a fabric softener before downy was introduced by P&G' and talked about P&G's product innovation that happens in cincinnati. The article went into detail of how ebay under the leadership of Meg Whitmanbecame the 'ibm of silicon valley' with all the consultants they hired and every idea had to be in a microsoft ppt and ebay hired McKinsey in 2002 to study if Google was a threat to ebay !
Coincidentally, within a week of reading that article on Forbes, I happened to stumble upon this book and read it and it reiterated on the fact about the design and innovation are key things for any company to survive and thrive in the economy.
The Author starts off with examples and explains how innovation and design can keep a company live and kicking by constantly inventing new products, designs and going into new markets.
I like the statement that companies do not fail because they did something wrong, but because they did not do innovate.
Then the author goes how to make the company design and innovation oriented - eliminating ppts, encouraging & supporting innovation and listening to your employees/partners.
The book has a lot of nice graphics, easy to interpret pages and lots of good thought provoking ideas
 Could use a little oatmeal January 4, 2009
I must preface this by saying that I hope the binding on this book was weak because it was a copy for review. Personally, however, if I published a book on "Designful"ness, I would design a better quality for the delivery of that information and secure the pages so it could be read without having to look at the tiny page numbers for reorganization. The book is printed on hard white paper, in stark black and white with a little lavender on the cover and a tiny amount of gray on a few images. This book is available online from Peachpit.com, and I would suggest reading it from the website if the physical book construction is not improved for sale. Now to talk a bit about the words and ideas presented.
Had I not promised to review this book, I doubt that I would have read past the first few pages because I am not fond of catchy phrases, the backbone of this book. As a person who uses both sides of my brain, I like to be challenged -- this is what the author talks about at some point, but I felt no challenge from the doctrine presented in, "The Designful Company." Another reviewer commented that he/she felt as though they were attending a seminar on this topic and I must agree, but I received no little goodies on the way out other than a list of recommended readings, albeit some of which sound interesting. Mr. Neumeier of Neutron (what a clever name for his company) drops sayings and companies but they fall flat for me because it really doesn't take me further than when I started reading. Much of this I've already read in The Wall Street Journal or seen on the internet or CNN. At the end of the book, I found a simplified list of his "'isms" which could have been read rather than trudging through the examples of his presentation. I guess I'm just not the audience for Mr. Neumeier's book because I work in a creative position with teams that are ever changing and his approach to designing a new company seems to be geared to a fledgling company comprised of staff employees who still are powered by competition and greed. I was eager to learn what I could apply in working with the few clients of this sort, but I didn't really gain too much other than a couple hours of aging while reading the book and writing the review. Although the author gives advice on limiting PowerPoint presentations to 10 words, he produced one on paper of 194 small and loosely bound pages. Could use a little oatmeal to keep it together and give it some fiber.
motivational book without considering costs January 4, 2009
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is poorly written; basically a set of distilled personal opinions on why innovations are important. I frequently consult in marketing innovation implementation, which are difficult, and this primarily-motivation book doesn't really address the cost side of the benefit-cost ratio equation for implementation.
This book feels like notes from a motivational corporate seminar on how to design innovations--more for staff encouragement than understanding for leaders. The new catch-all phrase "Rah, rah, rah--Design!!!, to solve all problems...", so the seminar leader goes.
This catch-all motivational book I find a waste of time first because it redefines the word "design" to apply to nearly every marketing or management function... not just visual design, but also engineering design, customer relationship design, product design, services design, corporate design, employment design, etc.. More accurate terms would be innovation and innovative management.
If the author wants to say a firm should continually innovate and put in the processes for this; OK, it's hard to disagree with this. But what are the tradeoffs? It's easy to write platitudes, but to accurately assess its costs and implement these are far more difficult. Figuring out all the potential costs (human as well) of a change isn't easy; and figuring which of the innumerable potential design processes yields the highest returns is difficult.
I've seen far better books on design processes or management than this. The one thing this book does well is to motivate someone to think about design processes.
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